Cerulean Stars - Chapter 140

Chapter 140 - Station Bound - Part 1

Stardate 48536.3 - July 15, 2371 - 17:59:16

Plopping down into the chair of her temporary room, Raine let out an exhausted sigh as the frantic tension of the past week finally began to bleed out of her.

The Defiant was currently speeding its way back to Deep Space Nine at maximum warp. A necessary sacrifice for the engines as the length of their unofficial mission to Orion had put them painfully close to the date of their first joint venture with Cardassia regarding the wormhole.

Taking a moment to just relax and enjoy the omnipresent hum of the warp engines, she straightened up and activated the desktop monitor, quickly cycling through the options before typing in her mothers com channel.

Several seconds ticked by before the worried face of Gemma appeared on screen. “Saya?” 

Raine smiled. “She's safe, sound, and currently sharing a room with her cousin since we can't in good conscience hold the girl in our brig.”

Gemma's shoulders visibly relaxed for a moment before her brow furrowed. “Saya's cousin?” 

“D'Vana Tendi.” Raine nodded, offering the other woman a somewhat weak smile as she worked out how best to explain her presence. “Due to a completely unavoidable series of events she ended up on the escape vessel we commandeered to meet up with the Defiant.”

“A completely unavoidable series of events.” Gemma repeated, staring skeptically at Raine in a way that made it absolutely clear how little she believed those words. “And will the Orions agree with that?”

“Probably not.” Raine admitted honestly. “But I can assure you there isn't any evidence proving otherwise and that both Commander Sisko and Lieutenant Bashir will corroborate the series of events if asked.”

“Good enough.” Gemma nodded, a small smile gracing the corner of her lips. 

“I'm going to try and contact the Tendi's to work out a way to safely return her to her family after this.” Raine expanded so Gemma wouldn't think she needed to step in on that front. 

Gemma glanced down at her desk, quickly typing something out before focusing back on the video pickup. “It looks like the Ceritos is still in the area, I could redirect her to meet up with the Defiant and handle the transport.”

Raine twitched.

“It would probably be for the best not to have a Starfleet ship directly involved in D’Vana’s return.” She refused wanly, not wanting to tempt fate by placing the Orion teen anywhere near that particular starship before she was supposed to be. “The Orions would likely find it too tempting of a target given recent circumstances.”

Several seconds passed as Gemma studied Raine before the older woman gave a bemused shake of her head. “I'm almost afraid to read your report at this point.”

“If it helps I'm pretty sure nobody died.” Raine put forward, only to hastily correct herself. “From anything we did.”

Gemma narrowed her eyes. “Explain.”

“Jellaa kidnapped Saya as part of her plot to overthrow the main branch of the Tendi family. So when we broke into their castle to get Saya and Jake back, Jellaa used the opportunity to kick her whole rebellion off in full. And by the time we evaced, pretty much everyone on the grounds was fighting each other.”

“Of course it was something stupid like that.” Gemma muttered, massaging the bridge of her nose and letting out a tired sigh.

Raine gave a wry grin. “If it makes you feel better, I made sure to break several of Jellaa's ribs when I revoked her parental visitation rights.”

“Oddly,” Gemma began, her lips quirking upwards slightly. “It does. And how is Saya handling everything?"

“I'm really not sure.” Raine admitted, slumping slightly in her chair. “On the surface it feels like she's treating the whole thing as just one big adventure. But I'm not a counselor, so for all I know she might just be putting on a front.”

“Is that why you have her sharing a room with her cousin?”

“Part of it.” Raine winced. “D'Vana's… Odd for an Orion.”

It was still a good ten years before the events of Lower Decks, so she hadn't been entirely sure that the D'Vana of now would have the same general attitude as she had on the show. But apparently the teen's level of extreme exuberance had existed long before her time in Starfleet.

“Odd how?” Gemma asked with a frown.

“Do you remember my third year xenobiology partner, Corina?” Raine asked, cringing slightly at the memory.

“The one that asked you to have a baby with her for science after she found out about Asari reproduction?” Gemma confirmed in a dry tone. “Distinctly.”

Raine nodded. “That level of odd. She was actually excited about ending up with us. And not in the Ferengi, there’s so much I can make from this, sense either. So D’Vana’s doing a good job keeping Saya thoroughly distracted while Saya’s solving the problem of us needing to keep an eye on D’Vana.”

Something off screen seemed to catch Gemma’s attention, and she let out a sigh before focusing back on Raine. “Sorry, I have to go, we just received an emergency alert from the Venture about some sort of telepathic bacteria colony.”

“I get it.” Raine nodded in understanding. “Starfleet never sleeps.”

“Even if sometimes we wish it would.” Gemma agreed in seeming amusement, reaching off screen to tap a control that ended their call.

“Well, that’s one down.” Raine muttered to herself, drumming her fingers on the desk for several seconds before biting the bullet and typing in Jellaa’s communications code.

A minute passed as the computer routed the message through the sector's subspace communications network before a stark ‘contact unavailable’ message appeared on screen.

That wasn’t entirely unexpected given the circumstances, so she entered the communications code D’Vana had given her for contacting the Tendi family, another minute passed before a ‘receiving location offline’ message appeared.

“All right.” She muttered as annoyance began to set in. “Computer, contact the Orion embassy on Earth.”

Immediately the screen switched to placeholder video of a wooden sailing ship bobbing up and down on the open seas as a jaunty pirate theme began playing over the speakers. 

As the song came to an end a female voice began speaking in a tone that was thick with thinly veiled derision. “As a valued member of Starfleet your diplomatic input is important to the Orion people, current wait time is forty two minutes, please continue to hold.”

The song started up again, leaving Raine to stare at the holding screen as her eyeridge twitched in annoyance. “Oh those fuckers… Computer, cancel call.” 

She could have tried waiting of course, but given the general sense of pettiness she got from whoever it was who had recorded the message the Asari had the distinct feeling that the wait time wouldn’t actually go down.

Slumping down into her chair, she mentally went over other contact options before deciding to shelve the whole thing till tomorrow when she wasn’t running on barely charged plasma.

As if to mock the thought of finally getting to take a few hours of actual downtime, the door chime rang.

“Come in.”

The door slid open, and Raine felt her eyeridge creep upwards in surprise at seeing once again normal Doctor Bashir standing on the other side.

“Something come up?” She asked as he walked in.

“Possibly.” Bashir admitted hesitantly, waiting several moments for the door to close behind him before continuing. “It has to do with the medical exam I conducted on Miss Tendi.”

“Is she all right?” Raine asked, straightening up in her chair to stare worriedly at the doctor. 

“Her antibody responses show an immunization regimen about ten years behind Federation standards. Which was more or less what I expected given that’s about the same general disconnect we normally see with non-Federation races. However…”

He trailed off, grimacing as a conflicted look settled across his features.

“However?” Raine prodded.

“...What do you know about Orion child care?” Bashir digressed in an odd tone.

“Almost nothing.” Raine confessed honestly, unsure about where the doctor was going with this. “Jellaa never talked about when she was a kid, and I doubt anything I've read has painted a particularly accurate picture of things. Why?”

The conflicted look on Bashi’s face returned, and Raine got the distinct sense that she was missing something obvious. 

“You mentioned that when you rescued Saya she was fighting her cousin, do you at least know if that sort of armed combat is normal for young Orions?”

“Probably.” Raine said, narrowing her eyes slightly as a suspicion hit. “Is this about you having a harder time against D’Vana’s eleven year old sister than Commander Sisko did against her bodyguard? Because if so I could schedule you for supplementary hand to hand training with my security officers.”

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you.” Bashir groused. “But no, and I’m sorry to say I can’t say any more than I already have due to doctor patient confidentiality."

Raine narrowed her eyes as desperate pieces of Bashir's seemingly disconnected questions arranged themselves into a potentially worrying picture. “Something you saw in D'Vana's medical scans made you think she was being abused?”

Bashir grimaced, glancing over his shoulders at the closed door before giving a cautious nod. “There were… Accumulated signs for something pointing in that direction…”

Unfortunately that didn't exactly surprise Raine given the knowledge that D'Vana had been basically raised to be some sort of amalgamation between family enforcer and assassin.

“By our standards I'd say it was pretty much a sure thing.” She agreed with a melancholy smile. “But you know the problem with that as well as I do.”

“We can't interfere with other culture’s ways of life.” Bashir all but spat.

“What!? No.” Raine scowled, feeling oddly annoyed with whichever group of medical officers had been responsible for Bashir's training. “The problem is we would need to convince D'Vana to ask for our help.”

Starfleet rules and regulations were very much tilted against certain kinds of action, but they also had enough built in exceptions that if you played the game right you could usually get what you wanted.

“Get her to ask for asylum, we could grant it.”

Though the Asari rather doubted D'Vana would be open to leaving her family at this point in the timeline.

“Get her to ask for medical treatment, and we could provide it.”

The contemplative look that had been on Bashir's face faded into a slight frown and he shook his head. “She's under age, we would need her parents permission for anything more than emergency care.”

“No we wouldn't.” Raine smirked, more than a little amused that the Doctor hadn’t even thought to question D’Vana about that end of the things. “Orion culture considers fourteen to be the age of majority.” Which the Asari had only just learned a few hours ago herself. “Meaning that according to Federation law, D’Vana is an adult capable of making her own medical and legal decisions without parental consent."

“Ah.” Bashir rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “Well, I suppose there’s no helping that given how secretive the Orion’s can be when it comes to cultural issues.”

“Great.” Raine smiled, making a shooing motion with one of her hands. “Then tomorrow you can ask D’Vana for permission to share her medical information, come to me with the full information about the issue, and I can have a sit down with her where I tactfully explain the various types of help we could offer.”

Bashir frowned slightly at her. “I am moderately sure I could handle that on my own, Commander.”

Raine rolled her eyes at the man’s clearly hurt pride. “While I fully respect your wide breadth of medical capabilities, she’s both an Orion and a teenage girl. So unless you want to face that awkwardness, it’s better to leave the whole thing to me.”

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Author’s Notes: Everything willing, there will be one more chapter in this Arc before we’re back at the station.